Citadel vs. Vallejo vs. Scale75: Which Paint Brand Should You Buy?

All three brands are acrylic hobby paint, and none of them will hold you back on their own — technique matters more than brand. But they differ enough in consistency and range structure that it’s worth knowing before you buy a starter set.

Citadel

Games Workshop’s own line, sold in 12ml pots, organized around a Base / Layer / Shade / Technique system that maps directly onto the beginner workflow: base coat, wash, highlight, done. Slightly thicker out of the pot than the other two, which some painters prefer for coverage and others find needs more thinning. Widest availability in game stores.

Vallejo

Sold in dropper bottles, which makes it easier to control how much paint you dispense and mix. Thinner, more consistent-flow formula than Citadel out of the box — a common choice for painters doing a lot of layering or airbrush work. The Model Color and Game Color ranges cover most tabletop needs; Model Air is pre-thinned for airbrushes.

Scale75

Smaller ranges but genuinely excellent metallics and specialty paints (non-metallic metal, object source lighting sets). Priced higher per bottle. Less useful as an everyday base-coat brand, more useful as the brand you reach for when a model needs to look better than tabletop-standard.

The honest answer

Buy whichever brand’s starter set matches colors you’ll actually use for your first project, then fill gaps from other brands as needed — there’s no dogma here, painters mix all three routinely. If you’re not sure what colors a given scheme calls for, PaintMini’s paint library lets you filter by brand and see exact hex/name matches, and generate a full scheme built entirely from paints you already own.

Once you’ve picked your paints, see how to paint your first miniature for the order of operations that makes any brand look good.